Children love to be creative and have wonderful imaginations.
It seems that as children grow older these attributes become less emphasized in their education. Perhaps this is why there are so many adults who are so unhappy in their careers and lives.
What happens to childlike imagination?
Perhaps as children they were not nurtured in their creativity and their imaginations were not encouraged by teachers and parents and other well meaning adults.
Great People of imagination
Great people like Suzuki, Einstein, Edison, Gandhi, Beethoven, Picasso, all had highly developed imaginations.
Einstein
I remember reading about Einstein in my early twenties and being amazed at how he used pure imagination to develop many of the intricate theories and concepts that have shaped so dramatically how we now view the world.
Let us find ways to encourage children to be imaginative, then to be creative.
It seems that one and the other come together in children so naturally, and in adults we see a seperation of the two at times. A child can be imaginative and create an experience or object out of their imagination. Often adults will do one or the other. Let’s look hard at our own lives and see where we are imaginative and can begin to create something.
How to nurture your Imagination and Creativity
Maybe it’s simply imagining a fun vacation that we had in the past year and then posting pictures up on the fridge, or perhaps simply finding joy in arranging a vase of flowers on the table. These simple acts are everyday art!
With Joy, Love, Hope and Peace,
Ben
Tomorrow we will be talking about Blossoming Character
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Bubbles of Awareness
How do you work with such young children?
It has been a fun observation of mine that the younger a child is the smaller their bubble of awareness is! “How do you work with such young children?” many people ask me when I tell them that I work with as young as two year olds in classical piano. The simple answer that I’ve been giving to my friends and interested parents is that I simply play Intentional Musical Games with the children and through these they begin to learn the basics of playing the piano.
Creative imagination
What I’ve discovered through my research into playing games with students is that the younger a child is the smaller their physical sensory world is and at the same time the larger their creative imagination world is! So, I’ve taken to engaging with very young children through metaphor, story telling and also tangible sensory games, that involve moving their arms and fingers often large movements to introduce a technique.
Move in closer
Younger children have amazing hearing capabilities and I have found that to communicate with them most effectively I need to move closer to them and speak in a low tone of voice, too much volume and they shy away, too far away physically and they begin to forget that I’m in the room, and start to play in their imaginations!
How wonderful
How wonderful early childhood is! I want as an adult to be able to enter the creative imagination more often and engage the world through my senses as a 3 year old does!!! But, children already have this capacity for creativity, it is up to us to not suppress it, or try to train it out of them through scolding or expecting adult behavior from them.
Engage your child
So, engage your child in practice through games and a spirit of imagination and then you will be speaking and acting in their world! Sit close to them while practicing and if you must correct a technique or form do it with them, helping them to physically do the action.
Explanation
One more thing, I’ve been asking my students if they want to know the reasons behind certain techniques or practices and even the older students, 8 out of 10 would rather not talk about the intellectual reasons for a physical motion, of course some children will be interested, but I’ve found that the majority of students trust their parents and their teachers and simply want to play the music without a lot of explanation.
Correct method
This is natural and of course is the correct method to use with children, help them to do something, help them to engage their imaginations with art, and do not worry about the intellectual understanding that we as adults seem to be so caught up in…
With Joy, Peace and Hope,
Ben
p.s. Tomorrow we will be exploring The Mystery of Artistic Motivation
It has been a fun observation of mine that the younger a child is the smaller their bubble of awareness is! “How do you work with such young children?” many people ask me when I tell them that I work with as young as two year olds in classical piano. The simple answer that I’ve been giving to my friends and interested parents is that I simply play Intentional Musical Games with the children and through these they begin to learn the basics of playing the piano.
Creative imagination
What I’ve discovered through my research into playing games with students is that the younger a child is the smaller their physical sensory world is and at the same time the larger their creative imagination world is! So, I’ve taken to engaging with very young children through metaphor, story telling and also tangible sensory games, that involve moving their arms and fingers often large movements to introduce a technique.
Move in closer
Younger children have amazing hearing capabilities and I have found that to communicate with them most effectively I need to move closer to them and speak in a low tone of voice, too much volume and they shy away, too far away physically and they begin to forget that I’m in the room, and start to play in their imaginations!
How wonderful
How wonderful early childhood is! I want as an adult to be able to enter the creative imagination more often and engage the world through my senses as a 3 year old does!!! But, children already have this capacity for creativity, it is up to us to not suppress it, or try to train it out of them through scolding or expecting adult behavior from them.
Engage your child
So, engage your child in practice through games and a spirit of imagination and then you will be speaking and acting in their world! Sit close to them while practicing and if you must correct a technique or form do it with them, helping them to physically do the action.
Explanation
One more thing, I’ve been asking my students if they want to know the reasons behind certain techniques or practices and even the older students, 8 out of 10 would rather not talk about the intellectual reasons for a physical motion, of course some children will be interested, but I’ve found that the majority of students trust their parents and their teachers and simply want to play the music without a lot of explanation.
Correct method
This is natural and of course is the correct method to use with children, help them to do something, help them to engage their imaginations with art, and do not worry about the intellectual understanding that we as adults seem to be so caught up in…
With Joy, Peace and Hope,
Ben
p.s. Tomorrow we will be exploring The Mystery of Artistic Motivation
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
